Destiny 2 The Final Shape Weapon Archetype Changes: All Details and What We Know

Destiny 2 has consistently been one of the most played live service games throughout the years, and as players embark during the Lightfall DLC, we’re slowly approaching The Final Shape.

Now, Bungie has given us some insight into the weapon archetype changes that are coming. 

Here's what we know. 

Destiny 2 The Final Shape Weapon Archetype Changes: All Details and What We Know 

The Final Shape was originally slated to release in February of 2024, and this is also around when most players expect annual Destiny 2 updates, so it wasn’t much of a surprise for players.

However, the DLC is now coming in June of 2024, and we’re getting some more news in the leadup to the DLC, including the following. 

In addition to compensating for the removal of Spec mods, we've taken this opportunity to buff some weapon types that have languished in endgame PvE, most notably Pulse Rifles. 

• Increased base PvE damage versus all combatants. 
  • Pulse Rifles: 20%  
    • Exceptions: Graviton Lance and Revision Zero's Heavy Burst mode. (These both have an intrinsic PvE damage buff built in.) 
  • Pellet Shotguns: 10%  
    • Exceptions: Legend of Acrius, Tractor Cannon, Conditional Finality, and The Fourth Horseman. (These are all already performing as intended.) 
  • Slug Shotguns: 9% 
  • Fusion Rifles: 7%  
    • Exceptions: One Thousand Voices. (This one was just buffed.) 
  • Sniper Rifles: 7%  
    • Exceptions: Izanagi's Burden's Honed Edge shots and Cloudstrike's storm. (These are both performing well.) 
  • Glaive projectiles: 7% 
  • Linear Fusion Rifles: 5% 
• Increased damage versus Minors (red bars)—this stacks with the base PvE damage increase. 
  • Sidearms, Trace Rifles, Scout Rifles, and Bows: 20% 
  • Auto Rifles and Pulse Rifles: 15% 
    • For Pulse Rifles, this is in addition to the above buff, and Graviton Lance and Revision Zero's Heavy Burst mode are included. 
      • I.e. Pulse Rifles will do 1.2 * 1.15 = 38% more damage to red bars. 
  • Submachine Guns: 10% 
  • Hand Cannons: 5% 
• Increased damage versus Majors (orange bars). 
  • Trace Rifles: 20% 
• Increased damage globally, including PvP. 
  • Machine Guns: 7% 
  • Swords: 7% 
• Splash damage from add clear-Exotic Primary weapons was overperforming in The Final Shape when combined with the damage buffs listed above, so we've pulled it down slightly on a handful of weapons. 
  • Reduced splash damage by 10%: 
    • Sunshot 
    • Trinity Ghoul 
    • Polaris Lance 
    • Graviton Lance 

Several releases back, we gave Kinetic weapons a substantial damage bonus in PvE to account for it being harder to use them in subclass builds. In general, we're ok with leaving this in place until we have a better-defined role for Kinetic weapons, but the bonus damage versus Boss-tier combatants was making it hard for weapons of other damage types to compete. 

• Kinetic damage type weapons no longer deal bonus damage to bosses; damage to other combatant tiers is unchanged. 
  • For example, a kinetic Sniper Rifle and a Stasis Sniper Rifle of the same subfamily will both deal the same damage to a boss. 

We've also made some quality-of-life changes to several weapon types. 

• Updated Heavy, Adaptive, and Aggressive Burst weapon intrinsic names to match burst count across all weapon archetypes. Functionality is unchanged. 
  • 2-burst: Heavy Burst 
    • Includes Sidearms, Hand Cannons, and Pulse Rifles. 
  • 3-burst: Adaptive Burst 
    • Includes Sidearms, Linear Fusion Rifles, and Adaptive Pulse Rifles. 
  • 4-burst: Aggressive Burst 
    • Includes Pulse Rifles. 
• Removed the foundry name from the Veist Rapid-Fire, Häkke Precision, and Omolon Adaptive weapon intrinsics. 
• Scout Rifles 
  • Updated the hip-fire reticle to better show accuracy and aim-assist state. 
• Hand Cannons 
  • Some aggressive Hand Cannons struggle to compete with the stats of the top-tier examples [cough] Igneous Hammer [cough], so with Crimil's Dagger and Something New returning in The Final Shape, we updated their stats. 
    • Crimil's Dagger (Iron Banner) 
      • Stability: 23 to 31 
      • Handling: 23 to 31 
      • Magazine Size: 8 to 9 
      • Airborne Effectiveness: 10 to 21 
    • Something New (Solstice) 
      • Stability: 27 to 30 
      • Handling: 24 to 30 
      • Magazine Size: 8 to 9 
• Low inventory Sniper Rifles were a little too low in PvE for our liking, so we've increased the minimum. 
  • Increased minimum reserves from 14 to 17 shots; maximum reserve is unchanged. 
• Linear Fusion Rifles 
  • Adaptive Burst Linear Fusion Rifles are strong, but in some cases are quite hard to control. 
    • Reduced firing animation kick and recoil for Adaptive Linear Fusion Rifles. 
• Wave Frame Grenade Launchers deal competitive damage as of the Destiny 2: Into the Light update, but some stats on these didn't have a gameplay effect. In this pass, we're adjusting the blast radius. 
  • The size of the wave is now affected by the blast radius stat. This will mostly impact the width of the wave, though the length and height will also be scaled. 
    • The default display stat for the blast radius has been changed from 100 to 50 (where 50 represents the previous baseline—any stat over 50 will result in a larger wave segment than what was possible before). 
  • Special ammo Wave – Frame Grenade Launchers overperform as add clear weapons in their current state, so we've pulled the length of the wave back a little. 
    • Reduced the length of the waves from 22 meters to 15 meters (except for Dead Messenger). 
• Swords 
  • Updated the Sword reticle to better indicate its charge state. When Sword energy is consumed, the amount of delay the Sword has before it begins to recharge now subtly appears in the reticle. 
  • Bug fixes: 
    • Fixed an issue where the Overwhelming Battlesong debuff from some missions would prevent Swords from recharging or losing energy while guarding. 
    • Fixed an issue where unpowered caster Sword heavy attacks would not reset the Sword's energy recharge delay. 
    • Fixed an issue where uncharged adaptive Sword heavy attacks cost the same amount of ammo as their charged counterparts. They now cost 1 ammo, same as other uncharged heavy attacks.